Independent Investigative Journalism and Commentary from New Orleans, LA

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

A Call to Action

In spite of City's Council's previous decision to quash Nagin's plan to purchase the Chevron Building and relocate City Hall....he's doing it anyway.

How? By tapping a 200 million dollar fund called the Revolver Fund.

The Revolver Fund was set up by the state as seed money for insurance financed or FEMA financed repairs. The 200 million dollar fund was directed toward the city with the understanding that at the end of the recovery the money could be added to the $411 million dollar DCDBG funds, bringing it up to a total of 612 million. The money was meant to speed the recovery process and it is essentially a reimbursement process with FEMA. The city must actually execute and pay for repairs, then they are reimbursed by FEMA.

Now, the problem with that equation is that any money spent under the Revolver system must meet FEMA requirements for spending. If you recall in my previous post, the FEMA requirements state the the money can't be used for new development....they can only be used for repairs of exising infrastructure.

Here's the problem....Nagin is trying to pass the purchase of the Chevron building off as a repair project and pay for it with Revolver money. That's bullshit. It's not a repair project, its clearly a new development and once he spends city cash for the building the city will eventually...inevitably....be denied by FEMA in its attempt to tap the Revolver Fund.

Aside from just blatantly defying the decision of City Council, Nagin is putting us on the hook for untold millions. I say untold because he has already claimed that $14 million of the $29 Million Mahalia Jackson Theater repair cost was to be funded under the Revolver...it will most certainly be denied by FEMA. And I suspect he's about to do the same thing for untold millions with the Municipal Auditorium deal.

Folks...this is insanity....Nagin is spending down money we don't have. He's just gone apeshit and he's paying out everyone he can before he leaves office.

Unfortunately, the Chevron purchase won't have to come back before the council for approval because they don't have dominion over the Revolver Fund. However, council can introduce a new ordinance to forbid the purchase. The problem is they will need 5 votes to override Nagin's impending veto.

Now is the time to raise hell. Call your councilperson and demand they pass an ordinance to stop this purchase....and amend the 2009 budget to stop the allocation of monies which Nagin wrongly listed as "encumbered " with the D-CDBG funds.

He is not only pissing on city services, he's about to leave us with a multimillion dollar dump....and when I say multimillion I mean possibly 200 million or more.

The scary thing is that we don't really have a good tally of what's already been designated under the Revolver.

Call your councilperson....call your mominem.....scream bloody murder......sit oustide City Hall and throw rotten eggs at people. This is the last chance we have to stop him from completely devastating this city before he leaves office.

And this amazes me. Channel 6 is conducting a survey on "Should The City of New Orleans Resume Efforts to Purchase The Chevron Building?". That's not the real issue, the issue is we don't have money to purchase it and we're about to misappropriate funds to do it. Nagin is gambling that FEMA is going to accept the expenditure under the "improved project" contingency...no he's actually not gambling because he doesn't care if they accept it or not, he's just going to spend out everything he can before he leaves office and stick the next administration with the bill. Even if we purchase the building, we don't have the money to renovate it.

If there is an indictment coming, I hope it comes soon so we can not worry about more of this coming down the pipe.

Someone must be wishering in his ear: "Call now and buy a new City Hall! If you do, we'll throw in a set if Ginshu knives for only 1 mil more. We'll even through in some free artistic pictures and a previously used award for leadership in recovery efforts!"

Hey, Zombie-- you posted this post, and someone mentioned it in the thread on the bottom of another Nagin-related story, and then someone else did, and now da paper has the Auditorium story back up above the fold.

You are one powerful brain eating undead man.

They haven't made it to the Chevron building Revolver fund issue yet, but give them a month and they'll get there.

Unless, of course, someone there has a horse in that race.

Comments this morning include directions to a facebook group of people organizing a Nagin's Last Day Parade. I'm going to go check it out.

Perhaps we are barking up the wrong tree here with posting Councilmember addresses; Nagin has clearly set this up to be an end-run around the council and that's where his focus is. He'll be prepared for challenges on that front.

But the ultimately the Revolver fund was set up by the state and is presumably subject to state oversight for e.g., applicability of fund usage for FEMA reimbursemnet. Even if that's not explicit, there's enough of a case there that we could tangle it up at the state level for months in procedural dispute.

So instead of preaching to the City Council choir, we should be reaching out to our STATE-level reps and asking them to step in.

A march would definitely have an impact as it would catapult it into national spotlight. But the question is do you get people fired up over this? I'm having a hard enough time just getting people to understand what is happening, much less get passionate about it.

I wish we could launch another march though, as I think this time it would have a very real effect.

Quick followup on my comment at 9:44 today. My state rep responded right away (Abramson, props to him for that). He tells me that members of the legislature can request an audit of "any entity that receives state money."

So for mominem and anyone else who is up in arms about this...write your State-level reps and request an audit of Nagin's use of CDBG and other State-allocated funds based on FEMA reimbursement.

Keep on hitting this point. Time to hit every point that indicates the continued arrogancce of Looselips Ray. Also check carefully relationship of all mayoral candidates and stories relative to their suitability for the office. The internet has given people the power. USE IT WISELY AND EFFECTIVELY. Thank you Zombie, dear.